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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24171925">the spaceman says "everybody look down; it's all in your mind!"</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangelight/pseuds/orangelight'>orangelight</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Les Misérables - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Child Abuse, Gen, M/M, Minor Enjolras/Grantaire, Physical Abuse, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Whump, im tagging the biggies but please read the actual TW</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:09:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,137</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24171925</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangelight/pseuds/orangelight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes a few times. Once, to vomit a single time over the side of the bed, and not much comes out. Second, to lights, white, white, streaking across the sky. And aliens. Third, at night, another alien in the corner. He mumbles something. The alien says Well, you shouldn’t have done this then. Done what? Been abducted? Fourth (unlucky number), his social worker is watching him and telling him he’s had a few seizures, you got your stomach pumped, you’re being committed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the spaceman says "everybody look down; it's all in your mind!"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>obviously this is a fictional story (especially the last part lmaoooo) but a big chunk of this is just me dumping full autobiographical accounts onto ao3 as if my life is enjolras’s so dont u dare tell me my whump is unrealistic &gt;:(  that also means it’s pretty weird and esoteric and probably incomprehensible so be warned</p>
<p>ALSO BE WARNED ABOUT…..</p>
<p>Potential triggers:</p>
<p>Child abuse<br/>Violence<br/>Verbal abuse<br/>Depiction of suicide<br/>Suicidal ideation<br/>Mentions of self harm<br/>Mental illness (hallucinations, delusions, mania, talking about suicide or dying like it’s a good thing)<br/>Reference to nonconsensual surgery<br/>Hospitalization<br/>Homelessness<br/>Minor drug use<br/>The foster care system, in general<br/>Cops being cops<br/>A complete and total disregard for and annihilation of ALL grammatical rules</p>
<p>it sounds a lot worse than it is just bc i dont want my catharsisfic to trigger anyone lol</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His mother dies when he is young. He never asks what age, but knows it was before he started remembering things. The earliest time he can recall, he reaches his father’s hip- five, perhaps? Six?</p>
<p>Either way, he has no memory of her. He never had anything to miss, aside from the comforting idea that she might have protected him.</p>
<p>Their house- not a home, never a home- was large and clean. Sterile. He remembers little else about it. By the time he entered the foster system, those grand hallways had become like endless white voids stretching ceaselessly into the uncertain distance, impossible to get to the end of, so vast it felt like being in the open space, no stars or planets, just dark matter and silence, waiting for an asteroid to come barrelling out of the black in his direction and shatter him. </p>
<p>Do not go to your father’s room; you know what will happen if you make him mad, and everything makes him mad. He swallows a handful of pills but it doesn’t do anything except make it harder to move and see and his father is just angry that he wasted so many and screams about the jar he’d been pissing in at night so he wouldn’t make any noise opening his bedroom door.</p>
<p>His first foster home lasts for a few years. Longer than any other. He is ten, he thinks. (Was he in school at this time? He doesn’t start remembering it until later, but he knows it wasn’t a shocking change, so he must have been in one all along. Was it a teacher who noticed his behavior? Were there visible bruises? Who else would have said something?)</p>
<p>The adults are quiet and there are four other boys there; an unlucky number. The boys are loud. They think his bedwetting is unerringly funny. He doesn’t understand. He clings to his foster mother’s cold shadow so desperately, but never reaches for her, not even then. Nothing good could come from it. She never warmed to him.</p>
<p>He thinks now that the other boys could sense he was new- not to the house, but to the system, to the world, maybe, an astronaut passing through an alien planet,.and they were just as jaded and mean as he would become in a little while. He forgives them. They were hurting, too. He thinks maybe only his outbursts are ever reported to his social worker, or noticed, because only he’s moved, right after a fifth boy begins living there (did they know? Was that his replacement?). </p>
<p>He remembers school and being in the second home concurrently. He must have been in school all along, but there are so many stretches of time where he feels like he wasn’t. It’s new, though. Classmates are saying Fuck and joking about sex, but he can see the fear and anxiety hiding in their eyes every time it’s their turn to talk about their “experiences”. So middle school. Maybe eighth grade. They don’t like him very much. (Classmates or foster parents? Don’t be naive.)</p>
<p>He cries frequently. He shivers and stares around with wide, red eyes. His knuckles are calloused from being sucked on.</p>
<p>No wonder your father- the voice stops. It continues: No father wants their son to act like this. It’s embarrassing. He smacks him around a bit. It’s not as bad, not as bad. This one doesn’t shake with rage, his face going violet, breaking his nose and leaving him half-blind for days afterwards, throwing metal cooking pans at his head, drooling and standing over him and ripping his hair out at the roots dragging his body around the house, his screaming doesn’t turn to wordless screeches of hatred that go on for hours, making his ears ring when he goes to sleep. Not as bad as You don’t feel anything, do you? Do you love anything? Can you even feel love? Do you even miss your mother? No one is ever going to love you. I hate you. You slut, you dirty fucking freak, you lazy piece of shit, why do you make me do this?</p>
<p>Not as bad. But someone- social worker?- must realize he’s being hit again, and he’s moved. He wants to die. He realizes it absently, biting his thumb. I want to die. I don’t want to die for nothing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Again, the house is in another district. Another school. Again, his classmates seem to loathe the very air he breathes. They shove him around, spit on him, and that’s bad, but it was mostly the disrespect, the mocking laughter when he tried to fight back, the expressions of utter joy at his anger. </p>
<p>He feels like an astronaut. He’s in the deep, black, nothingness of space, he’s surrounded by aliens, who speak alien and behave alien and expect things no human can accomplish. He reads about cutting so he starts doing it to see if it helps. His conclusion is Not really. but he keeps doing it anyway.</p>
<p>These foster parents are brand new. He thinks now he probably ruined them, ruined the chances another child would have had to be safe with them, gave a bad name to every orphan in the world. But they were so soft and expressive and warm, and noticed every time he stalked their shadows around the house, and turned to say Julien? How’s it going? in sweet voices. He didn’t know what to do with that. He screamed and ran away and broke their things and punched holes in the walls and hit them and seethed at them, waiting for punishment, but the worst he gets is her wringing her hands from the other side of the kitchen, in a starscape of shattered plates, pleading Why are you like this? Was it that bad? with tears in her eyes. </p>
<p>This goes on from home to home. He gets what he wants most of the time- that’s easier to deal with. That one’s gonna be a serial killer one day. Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up and stop acting like a goddamn animal! I put a roof over your head and feed you out of the goodness of my heart and- and you just- do you want to be somewhere worse? Oh, don’t worry, you will be. Does it hurt? Does it hurt? Good! </p>
<p>It’s worse when they try to act understanding. He can sort of see it in their eyes. Too much experience with walking on eggshells- he knows the signs. He can read anger into anything now. He knows they’re a few more outbursts from breaking, throwing him on the floor, stomping on his arms, saying What are you gonna do? Hit me back?</p>
<p>He gets put in youth MMA classes for his anger issues. He thinks it just made him more dangerous. He breaks a classmate’s nose, feels the strange squishy snapping and pain on his fist, relishes the feeling of power and control. This one’s gonna be a serial killer one day. </p>
<p>An SRO tackles him to the ground, and he starts screaming, he’s so rough, and is thrown into the back of a cop car so carelessly his skull bounces off the opposite door and he blacks out for a moment- abduction! I’m being abducted!- and he gets an expulsion and community service hours. He wonders what he would’ve done in juvie. He was failing most of his classes anyways.</p>
<p>He starts going out at night, trying to find fights. He pretends he’s lost his blaster, or phaser, or whatever, and he’s got to stop these alien creeps with his fists. Once, someone gets his leg in the right place, the place that had always hurt or maybe got hurt and he has a hard time running away. Most times it’s morning and he can’t find anyone, and he’ll go by the train tracks and kick and scream and beat himself on the head like a child throwing a tantrum and say I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, before the cops show up and grab him, bruisingly hard, and grunt They’re doing more than they need to for you. Be grateful.</p>
<p>This one family was just a woman- God, why can’t he remember her name? Was his brain knocked around his skull one too many times? Her first words to him were Can I have a hug? his were No. she smiled That’s fine, you let me know when you want to. he glowered I never will. she laughed You got it, cool guy!- and she had a baby. A little girl. He remembers her name. Middle one, too. </p>
<p>She was the smallest thing he’d ever seen. People say that a lot, but it was true.</p>
<p>The woman- she was so laissez faire, so trusting  She let a violent, antagonistic 15 year old boy take care of an infant, alone, within a month. He rocked her and talked to her and she gurgled and watched his expressions, and she was a baby, so he didn't feel too insecure to make exaggerated smiles at her so she’d mimic them. He rolled on the carpet with her when she was old enough to crawl, and didn’t care if someone saw him dancing and singing with her, or making weird not-words when he was trying to get her to stand. His foster mother taught him about almost freezing washcloths for her to chew on, and bathing her, and cutting up different foods for her to try and pick up with her tiny, uncoordinated fingers, and changing her. She didn’t teach him about sleeping in her crib when he was seized by terror in the middle of the night, but he learned that too.</p>
<p>His grades improved a little in that new school. Classmates weren’t as bad- maybe he seemed less weird, more well-adjusted. </p>
<p>He thinks, You might be getting too attached. He tries to reason with himself, saying he’ll have to do something, he’ll have to get out of here before it becomes unbearable to leave. He obsesses over this for months, always saying tomorrow, tomorrow is the last day, after that it will hurt too much, you have to protect yourself, you have to get out of here before she gets rid of you, isn’t staying just another form of self harm? </p>
<p>He screams at her one night, about nothing, that she’s a bitch and can’t tell him what to do, some bullshit. She clucks dismissively and laughs, again, Now, don’t you wake that baby! and he puts up his arms and growls, animalistic, at her when she advances on him, but she reaches right over and cards her incomparably soft hands through his hair and says You be as angry as you want if that’s what you want, but not if what you really want is to cry. So he does, and now leaving feels like a harder decision to make.</p>
<p>He doesn’t end up having to. Actually, neither does his foster mother. During a welfare check, they find a little joint, tucked in a tiny wooden box at the back of her dresser, behind her slippers and colorful muumuus, maybe that was why she was so laid back, why sometimes she would groan about her back while she was holding the baby, and hand her to him and disappear for a few minutes and come back a little blurry but better? He never even noticed, never thought about it, how could it hurt him? He was 15. He was practically an adult. Everyone smokes weed. Foster parents can’t, Julien. She knew that, and you’re old enough to know that too.</p>
<p>He tries hard to be angry at her about it, about how irresponsible she is, how she destroyed something so beautiful, how she’s a piece of shit druggie. In the car he kicks the doors and scream-cries I hate her, I hate her, bitch, bitch, bitch! but it’s the only time he’s ever had a breakdown leaving a house, and he thinks it must be obvious he’s a dirty liar. Did he ever hug her? Did he ever hug her? Someone is saying That’s enough, Julien. And he thinks yes, yes it is. Just you fucking wait. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He remembers, vividly, swallowing a bottle of pills. It’s one of his best preserved memories. The clarity makes him wonder Was that the pinnacle of my life? What emotion causes you to hold memories best? It’s positive ones, isn’t it? The stronger, the better the memory? Was I that excited to die? The desire to die is so innate, so settled into his matchstick bones, not even he can recall its origin.</p>
<p>Ambien? Almost new. Maybe 80 tablets. He thinks his eyes must have been wild, wide, crazed, because he could see and recall every detail of them falling into his throat from their orange bottle. No hesitation, no water, swallowing easily, and the anxiety that wracked him afterwards was- not exactly guilt, but like he’d done something illegal, not immoral, and was waiting for the cops to come around the corner and grab him, seize him, abduct him, hold him down, strap him down, perform experiments on his soft human body. Some sort of terror at the unknown. God, what if it’s true? What if he goes to hell? What if it’s worse? </p>
<p>He hadn’t been this way the first time he did it. He was so much quieter back then. So well-behaved. His hands shake and he drops the bottle over and over trying to hide it under the sink. Did they shake because he was afraid? Or thrilled? He lays down in bed and wills his mind to relax so he can be asleep when he dies. </p>
<p>He wakes a few times. Once, to vomit a single time over the side of the bed, and not much comes out. Second, to lights, white, white, streaking across the sky. And aliens. Third, at night, another alien in the corner. He mumbles something. The alien says Well, you shouldn’t have done this then. Done what? Been abducted? Fourth, his social worker is watching him and telling him he’s had a few seizures, you got your stomach pumped, you’re being committed. </p>
<p>He’s too tired, too out of it still, to register the humiliation of being forced to pull down his underwear, squat, and cough, two people staring down at him vaguely. His social worker comes to see him while he’s inside, and a nurse says She’s not going to want to see you when you smell like that. He didn’t want to shower while someone watched him. They ask him to draw his feelings. He can’t draw. </p>
<p>He’s apparently a good liar, though. He gives a pretty boy white smile and laughs, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. The (therapist? Psychiatrist?) doctor who talks to him once that week chuckles Well, I’m glad you’ve seen the error of your ways. Don’t do this again!</p>
<p>His brain isn’t quite the same after that. He starts hallucinating- speech indecipherable, even from a few feet away, even if the room is silent, or a theremin playing quietly. Aliens, shining neon green, nodding at him as if to say Yes, your destiny is to die, astronaut. You know this. What will you die for? He sweats and grins I’ll find it! I’ll find it!</p>
<p>He isn’t sure if the overdose is the reason, if it damaged his brain, if it just unlocked some problem already in there. Or maybe it unlocked something else. Maybe they’re real.</p>
<p>He goes to a group home. It’s worse, at first. He starts getting paranoid that the staff are aliens, that every night he goes to sleep they’re cutting him open and prying around in his insides. His stomach starts to hurt all the time. He thinks he’s finding new surgical scars every week. He has a nightmare about it one night, sleep paralysis and all, and doesn’t come back after school the next day. </p>
<p>He spends a month or so on the streets, not willing to go to a shelter in case the volunteers there are a part of it- later on, he’ll talk to people who did and think this was a good thing. In the dumpsters outside of any large grocery store, he can find a full bag of clementines; an entire loaf of bread; unopened jars of jam; and can steal small things because he’s lost weight since he came to the group home and his pants are baggy enough to hide them. The memories are muddled in his mind, but he knows he was lucid enough to use the library computer to find Craigslist jobs.The days pass by in a blur of fear and hatred and itching, always itching, constantly itching, especially his feet and his inner thighs as the skin reddens and bubbles and flakes away, until it slowly stops making sense. Didn’t I see the real aliens in the daytime, when the staff was human? Didn’t this scar come from my father? It takes another week for him to think Fuck, what is happening to me.</p>
<p>He gets put on olanzapine. It starts getting better. He’s older now, and he has something slowly unfurling inside of him that makes him want to survive a little longer.</p>
<p>One of the staff is not much older than him, kind eyed and exceedingly handsome, and he talks about the news and politics with him, and he might be a little bit in love. He says Why is the world so unfair? and the response is It doesn’t matter. All that matters is we do our part to make it a little bit fairer.</p>
<p>The staff guy brings him books and papers, academic texts on gender and sexuality and race, and he has access to a computer he can research it on. He gets more when the staff guy sees how he devours it. Staff guy is in college, and he makes copies of the homework from his Ethics and Sociology classes for him to do. He absorbs it into his bloodstream. He finds himself crying for other people more than himself. He finds himself crying a lot. </p>
<p>Have you found it, astronaut?</p>
<p>Yes! Yes! I can die for this! </p>
<p>He fights more often, but it’s less physical. He has words to use now. The staff guy will sometimes tell him he took it too far, that he knows the guy was wrong, that he didn’t have to get like that, but he whispers There was a girl in the room. What if she heard him say that and I didn’t do anything about it? She would think it was normal. She’s here, she probably thinks too much shit is normal already. That’s not fair.</p>
<p>The staff guy snorts at his desperate plea for understanding, and sparkles You said that like you were reciting the phone book. and ruffles his hair kindly. He knocks his hand away, quietly laughing at himself, and feels good. </p>
<p>He manages to get his GED, and a job. The staff guy puts in a good word for him. He brings a gift to his adult education advisor, and shows off his scores. She says she’s never seen such a high science score. He says I’m an astronaut. </p>
<p>He doesn’t think he’s in love with the staff guy anymore- You’re too perfect, I think. No offense. The staff guy laughs.</p>
<p>He’s out by 17, barely able to support himself, but barely is still passing. He likes being alone now, after the group home. Things simmer down. He’s shocked by how happy he feels, and gets enough financial aid to cover a few classes a semester. He thinks he might be working himself to death, but not working is death too. The staff guy hangs out with him on campus, and introduces him to his friends. They’re weird. Diverse. Talented. He wants them to softly squeeze his shoulders like they do each other. Touch me. Touch me. He starts a club with them in his second semester, but soon they’re not allowed to meet on campus and maybe that’s good because it keeps becoming a little bigger from then on. He starts volunteering. He saves up to see a therapist every few months. He reads books. He gets his first degree.</p>
<p>He gets too close with two of them. He can feel himself becoming used to their attention, used to inclusion. Things have been so secure and safe. They spend too much time together for people who’ve known each other for- what, two years? It isn’t supposed to last that long. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it doesn’t, so one night he grabs it and smashes it onto the floor himself. He feels so immature, out of control, panicked as he’s barging in and helplessly spitting bile at them and lying, lying, lying. His heart is screaming Don’t do this, please don’t take this from me, I love them, stop taking the things I love away. He grabs the glasses off of one of them and snaps the tender plastic in half, and starts tearing the paper out of his textbook, hysterical and he thinks maybe crying, when they simultaneously take him by the shoulders and the tall one says Okay, okay, you need to calm down and tell us what happened.</p>
<p>They’re angry, obviously. They tell him he’s being a fucking asshole for no reason. They’re also rubbing his arms, and the tall one measures Are you having a panic attack? and the little one is chirping Did someone say something bad to you? while wrapping his arms around him without any caution or hesitation, like he’s not dangerous, like he’s an ineffectual child, so he vomits God, please don’t leave me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! and the little one coos at him and the tall one rolls his eyes and huffs We’re talking about this, I’ll make tea. </p>
<p>He’s still waiting, years later, for the day they say Remember back then? I never forgave you; lose my number.</p>
<p>A boy comes into the meetings much later. His first thought is Hello. Who are you? and the sound of it in his head is completely different from how it leaves his lips. The boy stares at him too much, and has a cute scar covering half his face that makes one side of his mouth droop. The boy grins and laughs, wide-eyed, at him. The boy slings an arm around his shoulder, and acts casually flirtatious, but he’s shaking the whole time. The boy talks shit about their organization to the other members, talks shit about the other members to their faces, drunk out of his mind, but quiets and smiles up at him nervously, excitedly, the minute he sees him, and says Oh, your skin is so pretty! The boy walks home with him one night, swinging his arms in the pockets of his jacket, and says I wish I was more like you. </p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>You believe in things. You’re tough.</p>
<p>I like that you’re soft.</p>
<p>Really?</p>
<p>Very much. </p>
<p>The boy starts coming over more. At some point, the boy curls up against him on the couch, halfway on top of him, and nervously smiles I don’t wish I was like you. I wish I was with you. he responds Can I give you a kiss? the boy burrows his face into his chest and he can feel the warm vibrations of Ah! Give me a minute! I have to stop smiling first!</p>
<p>He tells the boy a story, loose-lipped on wine and seeing glowing green light at the edge of his vision that makes him nervous and dull.</p>
<p>It’s about a robot after the end of the world, and how it thinks humanity must have left it behind but is out there, and it goes into space looking for them, and it meets Laika- and he digresses Space travel wasn’t worth taking- hurting- killing her. She was worth more than- her life was worth- we don’t need to go out there.-  and an astronaut who was in his spaceship when the world ended and knows he’s the last person left but he’s old and dying so he says They’re out there, they’re out there, you can find them, so it leaves and never stops looking until it breaks down. He just says it because one of their friends is in a Russian Literature class and the boy had been laughing when they talked about the stories they’d read and it seemed like that kind of hopeless ending that the boy had liked. But the boy huffs and kicks him and says Fuck off! Fuck off. It finds them.</p>
<p>Does it?</p>
<p>Yes. </p>
<p>Okay. I guess it does.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>mmmm that’s some good catharsis! maybe one day we’ll all get this kind of happy ending. sorry for anyone who was given a fucking migraine attempting to read this what with the way it’s written lmao anyways it's pretty obvious but oooh which ami is which unnamed character?</p>
<p>title comes from the song spaceman by the killers</p></blockquote></div></div>
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